Gencler pull off one hell of an upset

To give you an idea of how big an upset was the Friday night defeat of Besiktas you have to realise that this has been Gencler's worst start to the league --- ever, that it sacked its coach a few weeks ago, a bunch of directors resigned last week in protest at how the club is being run and to top it off, our squad has a combined value of 22.9 million pounds (5,500 trillion billion TL) compared to 102 million pounds for Besiktas. stats from www.transfermarkt.co.uk

Genclerbirligi 2 - 1 Besiktas

A bunch of us met at the Alerta Pub pre kick but it was only myself and Little Oz Kanka who headed off to the stadium where we found BI John and Bernard who had brought along some Malaysian guests.

Lucky guests they were because they saw an immensely entertaining match.

Little Oz, Oz and BI John

Besiktas thought this must be an easy three points as they left two of their best players, Babel and Quaresma, on the bench.

Kick-off and bang... Gencler were the ones who went on the attack, playing much faster football and looking much more dangerous. Besiktas seemed to be handling it okay and then disaster struck them. A shot from Ahmet Oguz hit Ahmet Ilhan who had a shot which their keeper kept out with one hand and Vedat Muric sliding in put it in the back of the net.

We went wild but it was still very early days. Still, time to start time wasting.

What I expected was for us to sit back a bit and have to survive wave after wave of Besiktas attacks. My prediction for the score at this point: 1-3 to Besiktas.

How wrong I was.

Gencler did sit back a bit, but I can't really remember any good attacks from Besiktas. We seemed to be containing them easily and when we got the ball we were looking very dangerous in counter attacks.

1-0 at half time was more than deserved.

Besiktas brought on Babel and Quaresma and my fear now was that a very different Besiktas would come out.

No time for that as Babel was given a straight red two minutes after coming on. I think it was for a foot to the face of one of our players. It was on the other side of the park from us so I don't really know if it was fair or not. Let's just say that Besiktas didn't seem to complain much.

Besiktas down to 10 men and they went on the attack again but again we held them out well. There was one very much heart-in-mouth moment when Hopf made a rare mistake running out to get a ball which had just gone outside the box, he failed to clear it and a lobbed shot was sent in where Ousmane N'Diaye headed it out. phew.

We scored again... on a counter and things were looking great. We were controlling the match and Besiktas didn't have much time left. Then the referee called a penalty for Besiktas, which was converted and whilst we were wary it seemed like we had it. And we had it!

Celebrations. What a match. One of the best victories I've seen for a long time from Genclerbirligi.

Elleri Görelim ??
ŞŞŞŞŞŞŞ!
1 2 3! Şimşekler!
Lalalalalalalalalayyy GENÇLERBİRLİĞİ! pic.twitter.com/KX5OOwTLH9

— ODTÜLÜ GENÇLER (@ODTULUGENCLERR) October 13, 2017